On an August day in 1271, if the story is to be believed, a four-masted sailing ship sailed into the crowded harbor of Zaitun in southeast China, carrying a gray-bearded Italian Jewish trader named Jacob.

An account of Jacob's voyage, placing him in China four years before Marco Polo arrived, has surfaced in Italy. It provides extraordinary images of a civilization that was the most dazzling in the world, describing everything from mass-circulation pornography to an early flamethrower. It recounts how he spent six months in Zaitun and became embroiled in Chinese political debates so fierce he had to flee for his life.Scholars say that if the manuscript is authentic, it is an immensely important find, a major new source of information about life in medieval Asia.

Little, Brown and Co. is publishing an English translation of the manuscript in November, and a reading of an advance copy suggests that while it lacks the scope of Marco Polo's epic tale, it has similar historical significance and perhaps greater drama.

Zaitun, from which the English word "satin" is derived, was then one of the busiest ports in the world, and Jacob describes "a city of measureless trade" whose "streets are crowded with a vast ebb and flow of men and carriages." He is awed by its fabulous wealth but deeply troubled by what he sees as its moral depravity, particularly among the city's women.

"Thus these give no value to being chaste, just as others think adultery no shame, nor even to bear children without concern, whom often they secretly kill," writes Jacob, who identifies himself as the son of Salomone of Ancona, a city in northern Italy. "All these go about the streets wearing stuff so thin that a man may see their bodies, so immodest is their dress, may God spare me for what my eyes have seen."

He describes a city riven by debates that echo those of today, with elderly scholars condemning young people for promiscuity, for homosexuality, for feminism, for coddling criminals, and above all for being obsessed with making money.

"They bow down and worship the ancestors no more," one leading scholar complains of young people to Jacob. "It is for money and possessions alone that their foreheads touch the earth.

"Now, both young men and young women are in a state of desire, not being satisfied with those things which life brings to them, and being driven to wander in search of pleasures and of other things which are acceptable to them."

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A major problem for contemporary scholars is that the translator of Jacob's manuscript, David Selbourne, a 60-year-old British scholar who taught the history of political philosophy for many years at Oxford, says that he cannot make the original text available to anyone else. Selbourne says he was allowed to see the manuscript and publish it only on condition that he not show the original to others or reveal anything about the identity of the owner.

Inevitably this will raise questions about authenticity.

"I wrestled with my own doubts about translating a manuscript to which others would not have access," Selbourne said. "I decided, as I became aware of the gift that I had in my hand, that I had a responsibility to make its contents known."

Frances Wood, a leading British scholar of medieval China and author of a book casting doubt on whether Marco Polo ever went to China, said that she had not read Jacob's manuscript and so could not judge its authenticity. She added that the refusal to show the original to other scholars is "a major problem" and "a great pity."

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